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TfN# : Twitter for Newsrooms

TfN# : Twitter for Newsrooms

Twitter launched a guide for journalists yesterday. Twitter for Newsrooms (TfN#) is a basic explanation of how Twitter works and how it can be useful for journalists. It walks users through a range of Twitter's functions, such as searching, following, Tweeting, and applications like Tweetdeck. The guide seems like more of a retrospective step, designed for the last print-only stalwarts that have not adapted to social media.

Some social media sites have chimed in on the guide. Mediagazer's founding editor Megan McCarthytold TechCrunch, "Twitter for Newsrooms is a bit redundant for me because Twitter IS my newsroom." For most publications Twitter is not quite that integrated, but it certainly works as a newswire. In France, the news of DSK's arrest was initially broken through Twitter. In Los Angeles in 2008, an earthquake was reported on Twitter nine minutes before the Associated Press posted the story. Twitter can be an undeniably good newswire.

The flip side of Twitter as a newsroom is that it has no filter or fact checker. If Twitter is a newsroom, it's an uncurated one- and what's a newsroom without an editor?

The World Editors Forum is the organization within the World Association of Newspapers devoted to newspaper editors worldwide. The Editors Weblog (www.editorsweblog.org), launched in January 2004, is a WEF initiative designed to facilitate the diffusion of information relevant to newspapers and their editors.